From: Derek Daniels To: javi00@worldnet.att.net Subject: Omni Goes To ECC4 - WAYYYYYY TOOO GOOOD Date: Wednesday, June 02, 1999 1:26 AM Omni goes to ECC4!!!! Where to begin? I never do know.... My flight left at 6:40 a.m. so instead of going to sleep I just stayed up. Mistake #1. I arrive into the Newark Airport and track down my friend Tony Carmona (referred often to as Wisconsin as he is from there) then I tracked down the Cannons. From here we rented WAYYYYY too expensive of a car and drove to the break. NO ONE was there (I later found out that Viscant was there playing against all of us in ST). Team VA showed up and we all went to New York. Riding on the train was fun, as there were like 20 of us, all talking mad shit about SF. New York was insane. Too many of us trying to walk around everywhere. Highlights include seeing Missy Elliot, the crazy street musician that was WAYYY TOO GOOD in the subway station, and eating the only decent meal I would have the entire weekend. We went to Chinatown and that was cool. The main thing that sucked was staying at CTF for about 3 hours. Other notes of interest include some shady carnival thing and seeing everyone walk out with mad drinks in their hands. At this point we somehow lost Team VA and we went back to Times Square. We sat on a train forever, which sucked. We got back to the break and played various games for another couple of hours. EVERYONE was there, and the competition was hella good. I don't think anyone really got win streaks. I hear Sirlin did at A2 before all of showed up. Shrug. We went back to the motel and just hung out. Couldn't get the supergun working so I just went to bed. Got up and went to the break. The alpha3 tournament kicked off. I won my first match, and my 2nd match. Woo hoo!! I then had to face Henry Cen and lost to his crazy A Bison. That jump kick was WAYYY TOO GOOD. I had to fight Jump Suit Jesse next. His X Ryu wasn't that good, but it beat me none the less. This is where I would first encounter the EVIL 4th machine and the EVIL 1st player side. Now, I'm not implying that there was ANYTHING wrong with this EVIL machine, but I lost EVERY single game on this machine. Ugh. I hated that machine. The main highlights from the A3 tournament were Tommy versus Inkblot, Eddie Lee versus Alex Valle and Thao dominating with his X Dhalsim and A Charlie. Finals were staged with Alex Valle versus Thao with Valle winning. A3 took up the entire day (110 participants) so they ran the first round of the ST tournament. This is when I was in the mood for ST. I had to play against Master John for my first match. I picked Old Ryu and won 2-0. Then we all left. Note: EC is the HOME of V Vega. I think we all had to fight at least one V Vega. And they ALL take turtling to the advanced level. When they have Vega's stage, they will get a lead they jump on the fence to eat up more time. Snatches. And when Dhalsim has to CHASE Vega down…you know that's some turtling. We all went out to eat at some bootleg diner near by. Since there were so many of us, Choi had to ride in the trunk. When we pulled up, there were cop cars near us so we had to sneak him out. The only real highlight from this was watching Team VA try to get into the wrong rental car and the owner of the car they were attempting to get into bang on the window and giving us all dirty looks. We went back to the hotel and someone (we won't mention who Kris G) forgot to bring the power cord for the supergun. Bah Stayed up all night talking to Choi. I remember looking over and the sun was already up. Ugh. Then Valle, Rob I., and Apoc came charging into our rooms. I think it was around 7 a.m. Needless to say, everyone was mad at them. At this point I couldn't get back to sleep and stayed up. I think I MAY have gotten an hour of sleep that night. Mistake #2 Got to the break and the ST tournament started off again. My first match was against Kenny from VA. I had beaten him yesterday and when they called my name is when I was playing my first 2nd impact match. I had beaten that kid and rushed over to play ST. I was thinking to myself, "This kid is good, so I had best play Balrog". Thing is, I haven't played Balrog forever and when I started playing ST I seriously tried to parry the first sonic boom. From this point on, I just couldn't get warmed up and totally went brain dead on how to play ST. He beat me 0-2. I wish I could have played him later on. Ugh. Had to play against Mr. Wizard and dropped some elbows on him. Then I had to play against Henry Cen. I had to play him on the EVIL machine #4 and on the EVIL left side. He picked Guile so I picked Ryu. I did a point blank super when he did a sonic boom and he backhanded which went CLEAN through the super and he won. Frustrated at the weirdness that happened, I went straight to Balrog. Not learning my lesson last time, I still couldn't get warmed up with him. I made too many mistakes and when Henry pulled out this totally RANDOM TZW combo of Low Forward Standing Fierce I was just like, forget it. Died 0-2 I think. Ugh. So that was my ST tournament. I died horribly and was so frustrated with myself that from this point, I just didn't care about further tournaments. The ST tournament did have some highlights. Seth "Midwest Represent" Killian got 3rd. Gary from Team VA got 2nd. Choi got first. Choi lost his first fight to Lavar from Team VA (note: I beat Lavar last year ^_^) and in typical Choi fashion had to win first by going through the losers bracket. He took his footgames to a new level and beat Gary. I then died to some Philly 2I player then had to play John Choi in 2I. Neither one of us took it seriously and it was a very sad display of skill. He kept getting taunts instead of fierce - rh links with Ryu. I got Standing strong, fierce into super minus the palm. We had ONE brief moment where skill was shown though: he knocked me down and I parried his sweep, I swept back and he parried that, he did standing fierce and I parried that. But we both sucked. 2I was pretty uneventful from what I saw of it. My prediction of Mike Zavar winning didn't come through and Alex Valle versus Eddie Lee was pretty boring. One trying to get in, and one trying to keep him away. Valle won. The A2 tournament was pretty boring as well. My match against Henry Cen was the only redeeming Tournament Match I had. I picked Rose and he picked Dhalsim (why I don't know). I quickly implemented my David Sirlin Inspired Low Strong Strategy. If I had received a dime for every low strong, I would have been rich man. After I beat his dhalsim, he picked bison. The highlight from that for me was doing low strong at that weird position where it's not hitting but if he does anything it will and doing low strong for like 5 times then a walk up throw. Then jump in with nothing to throw. Muahahaha. I beat him 2-1 I think. Afterwards, I won Valedictorian from the school of Low Strong as taught by David Sirlin. Highlights from the A2 tournament include Thao MURDERING Choi and Valle in 2 games straight from each. I'm not even sure if they won a round. The finals were the most boring ever IMO with Thao versus Sirlin. They played musical chairs and switched sides non stop. I think it may have came down to last game, last round with Sirlin winning it. Note: Sirlin used more low strongs then me!!! The MVC tournament was insane. I have NOOOO idea how they packed that many people into one small area. Watching the tournament with Ric Collins, The Cannons, Sirlin, Gina, and Bob Painter was the most fun. None of us understand the game and IMO it was the most entertaining tournament to watch. We decided this: at low levels, the game sucks, as you get better, so does the game, but at high levels, the game returns back to being dumb - Double War Machine versus Double War Machine is just dumb. At this point, it's 4 a.m. we are all tired and exhausted. Since Choi hopped in the trunk last time, I felt like since there was no room, that I would this time. The diner we went to the night before was no longer open so someone with a good heart reminded them that I can't eat White Castle so they brought me back to the hotel room before going there. The couple of kids that were there went to Dunkin Doughnuts at like 5 a.m. and had food. Majority of the people took off to catch their flights while me, Seth, Tin, Wisconsin, and Jason "Push Some Buttons" Cole spent the night. I got up around 8 A.M. to help Seth catch a train and got everyone organized to get to the Newark Airport. Nothing really of interest happened there, just discussed mad OG with Cole and hung out with Todd and his girlfriend. Thanks: Todd Dwyer and everyone that help run ECC4 - an amazing job, Tom and Tony Cannon for being amazing people that never fail to come through in the darkest hour, John Choi for being one of the most amazing persons that I will ever know - I can't express that enough, Alex Valle for being my main cupcake ^_^, Bob Painter for showing up, Seth Killian for representing the Midwest, Wes and Jesse Howard for representing the Midwest, Thao for being the Dark Horse, Ultima for beating me down in HF, and everyone else that I am forgetting. Sorry for this post being incoherent. Derek Daniels Omni _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com